Matt Donovan has a dream, every night, like clockwork, never changing and always playing out the same scenario. A dream where, one day, when he is old and gray, when he has lived his life fully, he will be sitting on his porch in Mystic Falls. Next to him will be the man he has dreamed about for the last several years, Jeremy Gilbert.

Matt Donovan can't tell you when he found himself in love with his ex-girlfriend's younger brother. It might have started long before he and Elena began their doomed-from-the-start relationship. While Matt and Elena were best friends, Jeremy always somehow ended up embedded in almost anything they went out to do. Most of Matt's memories had a piece of Jeremy in them, and looking back, maybe he had been in love with him for a very long time.

When he was ten, he can remember the play wedding in the Forbe's backyard. He and Elena stood in front of Bonnie and declared themselves soul mates. While standing next the girl who played a major part in his life, a stray thought had been in his mind. Elena was cool and all, but she didn't like playing baseball or catch with a football. Jeremy did though, and he always made him laugh, and if he had to marry someone, wouldn't it be better to marry someone like that?

Matt also remembers thinking, at the innocent age of ten, that two men together were gross, at least that's what one of the men his mom brought over for dinner once said. And Matt didn't want to be gross.

At 14, Matt can remember when going to the Gilbert house stopped being trips to see Elena, and became trips to see Elena and Jeremy. Looking back, he can't remember when it became Jeremy and Elena, but he knows that on some level there is some significance to Elena coming second, as if an afterthought.

When he was 16, and a little more liberal thinking, Matt entertains the notion of what it would be like to be with another guy. Tyler had introduced him to the world of images the computer has to offer, and Elena is a only a virgin in the technical sense, thanks to him, so he isn't as innocent as the town would like to think. And one day, after listening to Vicki rant about how the boy she loves ( and Vicki is really open to love at this age, and it would appear her legs are attached to her heart) being gay, and how it isn't fair, Matt wonders if he had to be with another guy, who would it be? He imagines Tyler, but the rolling in his stomach tells him the answer to that thought.

Jeremy, on the other hand, doesn't elicit the same reaction. Nausea doesn't spring forth, but the tightening he usually feels in his pants when making out in the Gilbert Camaro doesn't come either. Instead, for a brief moment, Matt thinks about Jeremy: his laugh, his smile, the way his blush starts at his ears and spreads across his face until it meets at his nose. Matt feels warmth when he thinks about Jeremy. He feels it in his stomach, in his face, but most of all, he feels it in his chest.

When Matt Donovan is 18, with a failed relationship, an out of control sister, and a mother who would rather wrap he legs around a man she barely knows instead of her arms around her children, he knows, with certainty, that he loves Jeremy Gilbert.

He knows because when he encounters Elena he feels a sting in his heart. A sting not for their break-up, but what it has cost him. He no longer could be around Jeremy without outing himself, to help him overcome the shitty hand that life dealt the poor man. And, as he watches Jeremy fall into a downward spiral, a piece of him dies. When he learns that Vicki opened her heart to him, a bigger piece dies.

In a perfect world, Matt would be able to heal Jeremy.

In a perfect world, instead of using his imagination, he would know, with certainty, what Jeremy's lips feel like. He would know what it would feel like to wake up with him, what his skin would feel like against Jeremy's. He would know what it would be like to love him, fully and completely.

In a perfect world, Tyler Lockwood wouldn't look at Jeremy with want when the later wasn't looking.

In a perfect world, Damon Salvatore wouldn't always be touching Jeremy.

In a perfect world, Matt wouldn't recognize the same look on Stefan's face that he has seen in the mirror for so long.

In a perfect world, Matt Donovan wouldn't dream, because it would be a reality. He would spend his life with Jeremy, and one day would leave this world with him too, because even in death they couldn't be apart.

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But Matt Donovan knows he doesn't live in a perfect world.

Matt Donovan isn't rich like Tyler Lockwood. No matter how hard he wishes, he will never be able to draw a response from Jeremy like Tyler can. While they may be exchanges fueled by hate, at least they are exchanges.

His body, while sculpted from hours spent trying to achieve his goal of being the perfect football player, is no where near as beautiful as the mysterious Salvatore brothers' perfect pale physiques. Matt Donovan has the face of the All-American boy, which holds a certain charm, but cannot compete with the faces of the men who have so quickly taken so much from him.

At the end of the day, in the imperfect world that he lives in, Matt Donovan will go home to his empty house. He will swallow the feelings he has for the younger Gilbert. He will date the blonde cheerleader who doesn't know when to be quiet, and maybe he will eventually come to love her, and that will be just enough for him to go on.

But make no mistake, Matt Donovan will never forget Jeremy Gilbert and the future that he dreamed of sharing with him.

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Maybe there is a God. Maybe Karma reigns supreme. Maybe fate and destiny had a plan because Matt Donovan doesn't know everything.

He doesn't know that Jeremy has the same dream.

He doesn't know that Jeremy misses him too.

He doesn't know that Jeremy loves him with everything.

After all, good things come to those who wait, and Matt Donovan is a very patient person.

In the end, he doesn't know that one day Jeremy Gilbert will show him that maybe a perfect world can exist, at least in their embrace, in their kiss, in their love.